What You’ve Missed

What About Your Friends?

I miss my friends. There, I said it.

I knew that this would happen sooner or later, but I was hoping it would be later, rather than sooner. I also planned on having a job when I got here, but I guess we all can’t have everything we want. I don’t have a lot of friends back home. I have just a small group of people whom I just loving talking to and spending time with when we can. When it comes to friendships, I prefer quality over quantity.

I haven’t always had a great relationship with my friends. My mom used to emphasize that my brothers and sisters were the only friends that I needed, but let’s be honest: how many teenagers do you think are going to buy that crap? I used to have a bad habit of letting people get away with things that may or may not have been socially acceptable, depending on whom you were asking. I used to have this notion that when you had a friend that you should stay friends forever; I was too young and naïve to understand that people change over the years, and sometimes not in a good way. At first it was really hard for me to accept the fact that someone I was so close to is suddenly becoming a stranger, but in all honesty after you do it a few times…it gets easier. I know that sounds mean, but I’ve been through way too much in my life to keep people around that treat me badly and but then turn around and call themselves my “friends”. Some people are not worth the drama that they bring. Crazy thing is as an adult, I actually prefer to hang out with my brothers and sisters, especially now that almost everyone is old enough to drink.

But other than my siblings I do have some people who I really, really miss. One of them is someone I met through a girl who used to be my best friend. Another thing I like about my friends is that I know them from different areas in my life so they don’t know each other. I think I kind of like it that way. Spending 14 years in the Army, I’ve learned that a group of girls can be a good thing or a very, very, bad thing. Considering that I have 4 sisters, a stepsister, a cousin who I treat like a sister, and about half a million female cousins you’d think I’d be used to being around females. I am, and that’s why I know I’m not a fan. I’ve have had the unfortunate pleasure of being around some really mean, spiteful, negative, condescending, insecure, and/or jealous women in my lifetime (I don’t like to use the word “haters”). But it’s depressing.

You ever had a friend (or know someone) who’s just ALWAYS in bad mood? Nothing ever made them happy and the only thing that made them feel better was to be mean or put other people down? Or if they weren’t happy, NO ONE else was allowed to be happy? Maybe you’ve had a friend that was such a drama queen that she would turn the teeniest tiniest event into a very bad Broadway play- and find a way to drag you into her drama? But they don’t always start off like that, they’ll be super cool in the beginning and then once you’re invested, all these weird or crazy characteristics start to show themselves. Don’t get me wrong, I love “girls night out” but as an adult, with bills and responsibilities, I no longer have the energy or the will to deal with people who drain me mentally. It just makes me appreciate the friends that I do have: the ones that are good to me and vice versa.

I worried the most about moving down to Georgia without any of my female friends. My friend Tia, who introduced me to Lorenzo, ended up moving to Washington D.C before I came down here, so I kind of felt like I was going to be alone. Lorenzo told me not to worry about it, and he was right, because all of his friends’ girlfriends and wives are very, very cool ladies. I’ve met the last of his friends the night of the Mayweather/Alverez fight party. Please don’t ask me the name of the town because I have no clue, all I remember is that the neighborhood is beautiful and the houses are very big and spacious (but that could be anywhere in Georgia, right?). But his friends are really nice, so I think I’ll be okay. The “Art of Friend Making” is a complicated one, one that I don’t even try to bother with anymore. I just let things “be”, and if it works out-cool, if it doesn’t- I no longer beat myself up about it. I’m getting too old for that.